Congressional campaign information meets Google Earth for a mashup made in voter resource heaven.
Google of late stepped into the political arena with its latest offering, the Google Earth Election Guide. Google has assembled a wealth of information about the upcoming U.S. general election and will display links to it on its Google Earth mapping application.
The application mixes the company’s Google Earth program with information about the U.S. congressional races coming up in November.
The program is designed to serve as an easily accessible resource for users to find information about candidates, voter registration and campaign financing in advance of the November 7th elections.
Election Guide
The 2006 Google Earth Election Guide is available under the "Layers" tab of the Google Earth sidebar. After Google turned on the links, Google Earth users can see stars on the U.S. map wherever there is a race. It is designed to serve as an easily accessible resource for users to find information about candidates, voter registration and campaign financing in advance of the November 7th elections. A number of congressional seats and state governorships are up for grabs.
The Google Earth 2006 election resource tool, unveiled recently, indicates the country’s 436 congressional districts with stars on the popular 3D map of the country.
Easy Enlightenment
Clicking on a star pops opens up a bubble window with information on candidates that races in that area and links to a variety of information resources, such as the Web sites for the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics’s OpenSecrets.org, which gathers information about campaign contributions.
Below each candidate are links that trigger Google Web, image and news searches about them, as well as information on where and how to vote and campaign finance reform.
“Our hope is that young people using Google Earth will…make better, informed choices,” said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps.
"People can easily learn a whole lot about the candidates in their particular area just by browsing this layer on Google Earth," he added. This is the first time Google has created an overlay of election-related links on Google Earth, and the company has not decided whether it will do this for every major election in the future, Hanke said.
Party Allegiance
Google has openly supported the Democratic Party in the past, raising the question of whether the search giant may be tempted to skew its data in favor of one party. “The firm gave more than US$200,000 to federal candidates in 2004 — most of it to Democrats, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.”
By comparison, Microsoft workers and its political action committee gave $3.1 million to candidates in the 2004 election — 60 percent to Democrats, the Center for Responsive Politics reported. Overall, 53 percent of the tech industry’s $25.9 million went to Democrats.
However, Greg Sterling, principal analyst for Sterling Market Intelligence, does not believe bias is likely in the Google Earth Election Guide.
“I would be very surprised if [Democratic supporters Sergey Brin and Larry Page] had influenced the content in any way,” he said.
Evolving Earth
Google Earth, one of the company’s most popular products, is a free, downloadable application that taps into a massive database of satellite images and related information. Its video game-like interface lets users "fly" around the globe, zooming in and out of cities.
Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to allow searchers to access the world’s geographic information. There have been over 100 million downloads of Google Earth since the product’s launch in June 2005.
Google provides a variety of information overlays for the application, so users can display roads, borders, geographic features, restaurants, parks and hotels, to mention just a few of the options.
Google acquired the software in 2004 when it bought Keyhole. The Google Earth product family also includes more advanced, fee-based versions of the application designed for commercial uses.
The Google Earth 2006 Election project was the brainchild of two members of the Google Earth team who created it during the 20 percent time allotted each week of their normal working hours for engineers to work on special projects of their own design, Hanke said.
Spokesperson Megan Quinn said the Google Earth team is also working on bringing real time results to those windows on election night.
Designed by Google Earth engineers who had had a hard time finding aggregated election information online about races across the nation, the product offers campaign finance information from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and Center for Responsive Politics for the district’s candidates, along with a link to voter registration and voter information sites, localized to each state.
“Quinn said it all started with a political junkie engineer who could not easily find all the election information she wanted.” The result is a detailed and geographically organized listing of every congressional candidate in the country.
Looking Ahead
While only a relative handful of users may be likely to try out the Google Earth Election Guide during the next two weeks, the launch lays the groundwork for similar offerings in the future, according to Sterling.
"When Google Earth launched, it was a very interesting application, but it was much more like a game or novelty than a real utility.” Over time, Google has added some interesting content partners, like CBS, the Discovery Channel and National Geographic, said Sterling. “Ultimately, it may be something that people use as an alternative to search, depending on the type of information they are looking for, he added.”
The election-related material is a layer on top of Google Earth, Hanke said.